By Emma Townshend

On May Day morning I headed to Oxford as mists were still rising off meadows on a pilgrimage - but not to watch dopey teenagers jumping off Magdalene Bridge in honour of the May (or should that be "in honour of going to the pub at eight thirty in the morning"?).

My pilgrimage was to see Timothy Walker, Curator of Oxford's Botanic Garden, doing a day-long study of his pet genus, the Euphorbias.

By Steve Bloomfield

Chad has responded angrily after Sudan accused its neighbour of involvement in Saturday's rebel attack on Khartoum and Omdurman. Not content with closing the border and banning all financial transactions between the two countries, Chad has decided to hit Sudan where it hurts. They've banned Sudanese music.

A crackdown of a more serious nature appears to be taking place in Khartoum. Human Rights Watch believe some of those arrested since the attack have been tortured. At least two, they claim, have been "summarily executed in public". The Sudanese news agency has said that 300 people have been arrested so far.

By Martin Hickman

Am I alone in being disappointed that UK companies are doing so little to tackle climate change? On the day that scientists in Hawaii said C02 levels in the atmopshere have surged to a new high, big brands like Tesco, Sky and Marks & Spencer gathered in London to trumpet what they have done since joining We're in This Together a year ago. They sounded some duff notes...

Ok, so: Sarah Jessica Parker's dress. It's green. Very green. And her hat looks like a pot plant. And yes on first sight we too were tempted to follow the lead of one voluble editor and scream "what the fuck is she wearing?"

But you know what? Ten seconds later we'd fallen in love. Because - damn it - this is what Carrie Bradshaw is all about. She's pretty and whimsical and ridiculous and adorable. Remember when she wore a milkmaid's outfit?

In fact that's what the whole show was about; suddenly it's flooding back. Sure, we've done our fair share of SATC-bashing (and rightly so - there's a lot to dislike what with all the inane narration, soul-searching singledom and name-tag necklaces). But watching the red carpet rotating and reading the coverage... Dammit, we're excited!

By Andrew Grice

The Chancellor Alistair Darling's £2.7bn compensation package for the losers of the abolition of the 10p tax rate was much more significant than had been expected. Individual personal tax allowances will be increased by £600 this year, handing up £120 to 22 million basic rate taxpayers. This means that 80 per cent of the losers from the change will be fully compensated - for one year, at least.

By Rhodri Marsden

I posted a blog about six weeks ago which talked about ways of operating your computer remotely. And a story that's been circulating this week has shown that this ability to log in to your machine across the internet and launch programs thereon has managed to catch two laptop thieves red handed – thanks to the laptop's built-in webcam.

By Catherine Townsend

I've just started my summer reading with He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know after checking out a great review on The F Word. The reviewer remarks that "an awful lot of people see the "virgin or whore", "good girl or bad girl" paradigm as a relic of the past (ignoring how it still works against all women and girls today)."

I could have told her that and it makes me angry. Because I choose to write about relationships, I've been called a slut, infantile and shallow. I've also been accused of wanting attention and had people who don't know me throw pop psychology at me and tell me that I have self-esteem issues.

By Emma Townshend

This time of year it's common to find fellow gardeners distracted, unable to answer simple questions and failing to perform tasks you've asked them to do four times already. The simple explanation of the mystery is that it's the busiest moment of the calendar, that time of year when you look out the front window to find the seedlings you planted have doubled in size, apparently overnight.

But it's also flower show time, and the blogs are one way to gauge gardeners' growing excitement about Chelsea in particular.

By Clare Dwyer Hogg

When Shopping Bag is without a surfeit of cash, she finds window shopping is not as fun as it sounds. It should be a heady experience of inspiration, which encourages her to rush home and fashion scraps of fabric into couture. Instead, it just confirms that looking at things you want is only the first bit of a good day out, which should always end with SB struggling home with bags of purchases and guilt, coming up with new and inventive socio-economic arguments to justify the receipts.

UNTIL, that is, "whatsmineisyours" came along. It's the first British swapping (they call it "swishing" ) site, which lets you swap clothes with other fashion-minded people - for FREE.

By Tim Walker

Two recently dropped treats for sci-fi fans. This is the first authentic trailer for the new X-Files film, I Want to Believe. As expected, it tells us very little about the plot of the film. The producers have already said that it's set in the present day (so, six years after the events of the series, which ended in 2002), and that people who never cared for the adventures of Mulder and Scully before could still watch this as a stand-alone piece of work. What we do see in the trailer is a lot of Billy Connolly, sans beard, and a little of what might be a vampire (or at least, he looks like Max Shreck from Nosferatu). Is it just me, or does the X-Files theme sound seriously dated now?

After the jump, Star Wars...